The $20 Billion Food System Built to Collapse

01

The Farm Bill

Every five years, Congress writes a bill that shapes how 330 million Americans eat. The Farm Bill directs $20 billion annually to production of corn and soybeans—not because farmers choose to grow them, but because agribusiness corporations lobbied for policies that make these crops artificially profitable.

The largest 10% of farms—mostly corporate operations—receive 78% of these subsidies. Family farmers are left to compete in a system structured to favor consolidation while global food manufacturers generate billions in profit.

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02

Follow the Money

Those subsidies artificially crash commodity crop prices by flooding the market with an over-surplus of these foods—but this is on purpose. A handful of companies like processed food manufacturers, and the dairy and livestock industries benefit from having cheap corn and soy. They use it to make cheap junk food, and feed livestock cheap food it wasn't designed to eat. Subsidies upend the supply and demand curve so that big businesses make billions.

These businesses spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year lobbying to keep these subsidies flowing. The cheaper the commodity crops, the wider their margins.

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03

The Factory

Those artificially cheap crops have to go somewhere. Farmers are incentivized to grow what the system pays for, not what the land needs or communities want. When corn costs less to buy than to grow, feedlots concentrate thousands of animals on corn-based diets. Cheap corn becomes high-fructose corn syrup. We are what we eat, and we've become corn.

Today, corn and soybeans cover 180 million acres—more than all other crops combined. This isn't farming shaped by farmers' choices. It's farming shaped by agribusiness corporations who wrote the rules.

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04

The Bill Comes Due

The true cost of this system doesn't show up at the supermarket. It shows up in hospital bills, contaminated wells, and shuttered family farms. Diet-related disease fueled by cheap processed food is now the #1 cause of death in America. Not accidents. Not violence. Not drugs.

Health 70% overweight

Environment 57B tons soil lost

Economic 30% farmers on SNAP

A majority of Americans are overweight. 30% of farmers rely on food stamps to eat. 57 billion tons of topsoil have washed away. The same system creates disasters in public health, the economy, and the environment.

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05

The Fragile Machine

Our food system has become reliant on a system of thousands and thousands of miles of logistical chains spanning continents. This concentration creates vulnerability. The same forces that consolidated farms, processors, and supply chains also eliminated redundancy. Today's food system runs on 3 days of grocery inventory, 6 corn varieties covering 43% of production, and a handful of mega-plants processing half the nation's meat.

In 1970, a single corn blight destroyed 15% of the harvest when the system was more diversified and less concentrated. One disease, one cyberattack, one port closure, and we learn what efficiency really costs.

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06

Where This Leads

Systems that extract faster than they regenerate have a predictable endpoint. In 1972, MIT researchers modeled this trajectory and found a full system collapse was imminent. In 2020, we ran the numbers again. The outlook is bleak, as current data tracks the collapse scenario almost exactly.

The models point to an inflection around 2040, but not as a single catastrophe, rather as cascading failures. Soil too depleted. Aquifers pumped dry. Supply chains that snap under stress. No more fossil fuels that we rely on to fertilize food. This is where the current system leads. But we still have time to redesign the system.

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07

The Alternative

Every part of this system was designed—by policy choices, market incentives, and lobbying dollars. Designed systems can also be redesigned. There's another path: regenerative practices that rebuild soil, create resilience, and policies that serve communities instead of corporations.

It's not going backward. It's going forward intelligently.

Toggle above to see what a food system designed for resilience—not extraction—could look like.